View full sizeGazette fileKalamazoo College plans to resubmit to the city of Kalamazoo plans to reconfigure its outdoor athletic grounds, including this area around Angell Field, but has dropped plans for stadium lights for now.

KALAMAZOO — Temporarily backing away from its plan to install stadium lighting, Kalamazoo College will try again to get city approval for a $16 million redevelopment of its athletic-fields complex.

The vote came after a four-hour public hearing at which numerous residents spoke against the college’s request, especially the plan to install lights.

The complex abuts homes in the West Main Hill neighborhood.

This time, instead of going after a “site-wide” variance, college spokesman Jeff Palmer said “K” will seek three variances addressing the key aspects of the renovation: to construct a new field house, to re-configure fields, and to change the dimension of the parking lot.But stadium lighting is not part of the requests.

Palmer said, “the lights are a strong issue for the neighborhood, so we’ll take it off the table for now and proceed with the understanding that we may go back after that later on.”

He said college officials developed their new requests after getting counsel from city officials and also meeting with residents.

“The city manager’s and city attorney’s office and city staff lead us to understand that the Zoning Board of Appeals is the proper venue to discuss these issues,” Palmer said.

If the college meets the Feb. 10 application deadline, its variance requests will come before the zoning board in March.

At that March meeting, the board will first determine whether the college’s new requests are appreciably different than the first one, said Pete Eldridge , project coordinator for Kalamazoo’s community planning and development department.

The same request can not be brought back after it has been denied.

If they pass muster, he said, the board will address the new variance requests on their merits and also hear public comment.

Eldridge said he doesn’t know what the board will rule but it will consider the “the pros and cons of the new requests brought before them.”

“They are going to be listening closely to the folks in the neighborhood,” he said.

The college hopes to start the project in the spring and have it completed by the fall of 2012.

Aside from the lighting issue, another neighborhood group, the Oakland Drive-Winchell Neighborhood Association, has argued that K-College needs to be rezoned altogether and should not be seeking a variance.

The college’s campus, including the athletic fields, have been zoned residential, even though a new zoning classification known as “Institutional Campus” was created in 2005.

City officials have held that owners, such as K-College, could request the rezoning when it made sense to them.

Palmer said that the college is pursuing rezoning but because that process could take a few years to complete, officials are seeking the much more expeditious variances so the project can begin this spring.

“Waiting for the IC (process) will really not be in the college’s best interest and so we want to move ahead as quickly as possible,” he said.

As the college goes through the rezoning process — which includes getting public input — that’s when it will pursue the stadium lighting issue.

“Under IC (rezoning process) we will conduct a study and actually look at the issue of lights and property values and bring in an expert to conduct a study,” Palmer said.